NXT Is Ready To Win The Royal Rumble

The landscape of WWE one year from now should provide a unique opportunity at the Royal Rumble to at least one lucky superstar.

With NXT’s footprint only increasing in recent time and a combined nine competitors having appeared between this year’s pair of Rumble matches, the odds are very good that we’re a year away from seeing an NXT superstar come out of the woodwork to win one of the two matches in a star-making performance.

I, for one, am all for it.

Believe it or not, there is a precedent for surprise/underdog winners of the match. Back when WWE originally signed the Steiner Brothers, Bruce Prichard said the original pitch was for Scott Steiner to win the Royal Rumble out of thin air and go on to win the WWF Championship at WrestleMania IX. Bruce also went on record recently to say that midcarders winning the Rumble doesn’t happen by design because they usually don’t have the juice to remain sustainable main eventers after the fact, but the pitch for Steiner intrigued me. I am a fanatic sports fan and love a good upset. It’s great seeing instances like a 15-seed beat a 2-seed in the NCAA Tournament or a sleeping giant finally waking up to reclaim its throne. Remember when Leicester City won the English Premiership? It was awesome!

It is true that we never really got an extreme case of this at the Rumble as was proposed with Steiner, but there have been years where the Rumble wasn’t as predictable, and as far as I can tell, unpredictability generates buzz. If I remember correctly, John Studd’s Royal Rumble win came pretty much out of left field. While Steve Austin has won more Royal Rumbles than anyone, Mr. McMahon actually getting the nod in ‘99 was considered a huge surprise. Nobody expected John Cena to return in 2008 and he ended up winning the whole thing, and one of six or seven guys could have taken it when Benoit won in 2004. With all the talent WWE has under its roof these days, it’s totally possible a day may come where we get back to a more unpredictable Royal Rumble.

Of course, I am not at all ragging on predictable outcomes. Predictability is very rarely a product of bad booking, and it’s usually a result of the contrary. Sometimes the destination needs to take a backseat to the journey, but WWE’s superstar bubble might be ready to burst, depending on how things go in the coming months.

We do this dance with Brock Lesnar every year, but I have to believe he still has his eye on Daniel Cormier and the UFC Heavyweight Championship considering he is still in the USADA testing pool and Cormier is still, to this point, without a dance partner. Ronda Rousey is set to be finishing up after WrestleMania, and you can even hear it from the horse’s mouth if you’d like to. We can’t count on a Roman Reigns comeback right now and if we ever get it, we’re definitely not going to know when it’s going to be. And at the time of this writing, we’ve just received the news that Dean Ambrose will be finishing up with WWE after WrestleMania, so there really could be a dearth of top guys and gals once ‘Mania season ends.

Assuming all of these dominoes fall, you have Raw lacking believable heels, SmackDown lacking babyfaces to put on top outside of an aging AJ Styles, and both women’s divisions in need of fresh new contenders on both shows. Given what we know about WWE’s decision-making over the last year, a second Superstar Shakeup can only serve to put a BandAid on an overall larger problem.

But this is why the Royal Rumble was created, right? It’s the one event of the year you can point to and say, “They can definitely make a new star there.” With the recent regular inclusion of NXT stars in the rumble, WWE has unknowingly (or knowingly?) created the scenario where an NXT star enters the match during an uneventful time and just happens to go the distance and punch their ticket to the main roster and WrestleMania. Think of it as an amateur golfer winning a major championship. It’s been done before, ya know.

Of course, it will take the right superstar to captivate the audience in such a way that the whole experiment doesn’t fall flat, because if that happens, so too does the talent, and wrestling is very much an industry of first impressions. We also don’t speak in absolutes when it comes to wrestling, but I can’t help but ponder a few names who might be able to play the role of NXT sleeper-turned-Rumble champion and WrestleMania main eventer.

Here are two options I’ve come up with for both the men’s and women’s matches, based on call-up timing, overall talent, popularity and upside:

Matt Riddle

Generally, when a wrestler comes into NXT and immediately assumes the role of top guy, it means they usually have 12-to-18 months TOPS on the brand before the main roster comes calling. That means guys like Aleister Black, Tommaso Ciampa and Adam Cole will more than likely be main roster-bound before the next Rumble. Matt Riddle, however, is fresh meat in NXT and has all the tools of a top guy. Once post-Mania call-ups hit the brand this spring, it’s very easy to see Riddle immediately slotting in as an NXT Championship contender while he continues to develop. Riddle has been wrestling for just three years, so considering where he is now, I shudder to think about how good he can be by next January.

I mentioned Brock Lesnar as a potential departure, but if that doesn’t happen and Brock goes into WrestleMania with the belt (again), then why not have Riddle, a former UFC fighter in his own right, win the Rumble and go onto WrestleMania to conquer the Beast once and for all? I liken it to the fairytale of the knight who is able to pull the sword from the sacred stone, then “takes a bunch of mushrooms” and gets mauled by the dragon. I’m pretty sure I have that wrong…tweet me if you can decipher the comparison I’m trying to make here. But Riddle getting the rocket push to face Lesnar would have box office appeal.

Johnny Gargano

I have a lot of theories on where NXT is going with Johnny Gargano this year. While I’ve loved the heelish side we’ve seen of him, I don’t think he’s long for it. I believe he eventually betrays Tommaso Ciampa and forces the champ’s hand for another NXT Championship match over WrestleMania weekend where he finally wins the big one. When Mr. McMahon inevitably plucks talent from NXT in the ensuing weeks, Gargano could get overlooked because of his size and overall importance to the NXT brand’s drawing power at house shows. That would give “Johnny Wrestling” almost a full year to have a proper run with the belt before he finally forces WWE’s hand… at next year’s Royal Rumble.

Assuming Gargano continues his ascent up the popularity ladder, he may afford the powers that be no choice but to push him to the moon. If he does eventually get his hands on the NXT Championship, WWE may end up telegraphing his win which would ultimately hurt the surprise factor you’d have with a Matt Riddle win. However, I don’t think the fans would care. Those who are best set up for main roster success are the ones who are immediately injected into a key program, and I can’t think of a more important program for a newcomer than winning the Rumble and teasing which champion they’ll target at WrestleMania. Come to think of it, it creates a scenario where if Raw and SmackDown go back to authority figures, you can do the old Eric Bischoff-Stephanie McMahon-type angles where they are trying to recruit the Royal Rumble winner to their show.

Toni Storm

Believe me, I considered including Rhea Ripley as an option, though this idea only works if the winner is a babyface, (even though I could easily see a scenario where Ripley gets so over as a heel she accidentally turns herself at some point in the next calendar year). All that said, I still think Toni Storm is the better bet. Storm’s ETA may be closer to two or three years because of her age and how meaningful she is to the NXT UK touring brand, which is why she would make for a great surprise winner.

If Toni were to win the women’s Rumble, I’m sure Charlotte, who will likely spend the next calendar year as a heel, will be in need of a fresh, quality WrestleMania opponent. Asuka is another possibility and as we’ve seen in the past, “The Empress of Tomorrow” is sort of agnostic to alignment and can work either side of the fence in a pinch. Both would be great matches and sometimes that’s all it takes to get a fresh face over on the main roster: great matches. Think Kevin Owens and his series with John Cena, for instance. All of those matches got high acclaim and really set the tone for Owens’ main roster run. Of course, it also helped to have the rub of working with Cena, which is what Toni can get out of working with Charlotte or Asuka right out of the gate.

Bianca Belair

Bianca Belair has a lot of work to do before she’s ready for the main roster, but again, this is a year down the line. While I wasn’t a big fan of her match with Shayna Baszler at NXT Takeover: Phoenix, she showed flashes of what WWE looks for in top female stars: power, flash and an ability to sell. As Bianca begins to refine these qualities in time, she should be able to work well with anyone, though will be best suited at the top of the card thanks to her unique look and promo ability. There’s a 50-50 chance she gets a run with the NXT Women’s Championship before next year’s Rumble, but if she’s to be the one to win it, I would probably err on the side of keeping her away from the belt in order to influence the element of surprise.

If it’s 50-50 that Belair wins the gold on NXT before the Rumble, then there’s 5-4 odds on Becky Lynch going into next year’s WrestleMania as the Raw Women’s Champion. If that’s the match they decide to go with at WrestleMania 36, then it makes plenty of sense to me. That match would have two of the biggest egos in the women’s division facing off, with the ring being big enough to contain just one of them. I don’t know if Bianca would beat Becky in that scenario, but Becky’s also the type of wrestler who can make anyone standing across the ring from them look good, particularly on the larger stages. This would be a low-risk, high-reward gamble for WWE, as Belair will always have her athleticism and charisma to fall back on.

Who do you think would make for an ideal surprise Royal Rumble winner from one of the NXT brands? Please let us know by tagging us on Twitter! (@jackgoodwillie, @TheWrestlingEst)